Saturday, September 21, 2013

I just turned 64, and so it was natural, I suppose, that several
people (beginning with my sister) sang to me or quoted the Paul
McCartney song (credited to Lennon-McCartney) “When I'm 64”. It was recorded in 1967 when McCartney, now 71, was 25 (his father
had just turned 64 the year before, perhaps when he wrote it). It's a
light, fun song with a good melody, discussing a seemingly far-off
future centered around a stable and loving relationship, with
children and “grandchildren on my knee”. So I found myself
walking around singing it and was struck by the lines “every summer
we could rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight (if it's not too dear);
we will scrimp and save...”. Although he had already achieved a lot
of success and money, McCartney's positive vision of a far-off future
was a decidedly working-class one, natural based on his background.
And it's good, and right, and much more likely to be something his fans
could hope for than images of wealth and luxury such as the older Sir
Paul was able to enjoy. It spoke to and speaks to the people.

All the Beatles came from working-class backgrounds, and far from
being ashamed of it, were proud of where they had come from, who
their fan base was, and, while enjoying their wealth (and often using
it to support good causes) never portrayed themselves as better than
the people they had come from. This is expressed most explicitly in
John Lennon's anthem “A working-class hero is something to be”.
While the concept of “class” is a consciously more English than
American one, consistent with their history of aristocracy (we talk
more of “socioeconomic status”) the reality is that today class
(measured as the probability that someone will stay in the same
socioeconomic group as their parents) is more entrenched in the US
than it is in Britain. Still, Britain has a Labor (“Labour”)
Party, consciously acknowledging the working-class. It has a powerful
legacy; in the late 1940s, it led to the creation of the National
Health Service, guaranteeing access to medical care for all its
people, while the US labor movement sought to use bargaining for
health insurance through union contracts as a way to enhance itself.
This was fine when most Americans were in unions, or even employed in
jobs with health insurance, but has created some problems since. Many
other British singers have advocated even more assertive
working-class values, most notably Billy Bragg, but also Dire Straits
and many others.

This is not to say that there is an absence of such working-class
consciousness among US performers. Clearly, the exemplar is Bruce
Springsteen who, 3 days younger than me, also is just turning 64. His
songs do not general espouse an overtly political message but rather
tell the stories of people like those he grew up with, who work in
factories, get laid off, get pregnant young, get divorced, have
drinking problems, have fun in lots of ways, and mostly are defined
by an economic uncertainty about the present and the future. Whether
a vacation in a cottage on the the Isle of Wight (or its US
equivalent) is what they look forward to – perhaps it is a bass
boat at the lake – but their visions of retirement are generally
not Palm Beach or skiing at Gstaad.

Springsteen is of course not the only US rock musician to
consciously sing of working-class roots, but other American musical
traditions. American folk music, whether of English/Scottish/Irish
roots though the Appalachians, or African roots through slavery and
the African-American experience, or the more recent Spanish language
(but of many cultures), or all of the many ethnic and language groups
that make up this country, has always told the story of the people,
and the people have always been mostly workers. The descendants of
these traditions are still vibrant not just in the small bin labeled
“folk music” (with Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, and Phil Ochs,
and others), but “rhythm and blues” and “country music”, all
of which tap into the experiences of regular people for their
strength and their identity. The blues are certainly about poor and
working people, and so is most of country music. Sometimes folks like
Billy Bragg record songs that are explicitly political (“The
Internationale” or “The Worker's Flag”), or tributes like “I
Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night”, based on an earlier paean by
Alfred Hayes to a working-class hero, Joe
Hill, who didn't get rich but was, rather, hanged for his songs
about workers. But, mostly, these songs are about people who work
hard and, if they're lucky, are just making it.

In a recent article in Salon,
“Millenials
hate Bruce Springsteen”, EJ Dickson tries to show them why they
are wrong. This is not my focus, but rather it is on some of the
comments on the article (and I recognize that finding moronic
comments on almost anything posted on-line is easy pickings!) which
suggested that Bruce “pretends” to sing about workers, but was a
phony because he had “made millions”. Sure he has, but he hasn't
forgotten where he comes from hasn't stopped thinking about them and
their lives, and that is a good thing. What would be a bad thing
would be for him to have changed his loyalty to defend the folks of
his newly-acquired social class. As some have. Frank Sinatra, a
working class kid from Hoboken, was a New-Dealer, who sang (and made
a film of) the progressive patriotic “The
House I Live In” and opposed HUAC,
but later became a Reagan Republican. Even Sir Paul no longer writes
about workers. It is OK to be a class traitor like FDR, to defend
regular folks from those who run everything and need no defending,
but not the other way around.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Labor Day weekend at
the lake. We weren’t going to come because this last weekend of the summer is
crowded and busy. It ends this weekend; once we took vacation here with Adam
and Herbie and came down on Labor Day itself, and by that afternoon and for the
rest of the week it was quiet and beautiful.. We came down mid-day Saturday,
95+ degrees, took a couple of hours for the house to cool down.

I did make good on my promise to wake up early no matter
what time we went to bed (moderately late after watching “Murder by Decree”, a
Sherlock-Holmes-finds-the-real-story-behind-Jack-the-Ripper with Christopher
Plummer and James Mason), and was rewarded with a truly Homerian rosy-fingered
dawn. Sunglasses were superfluous for quite a bit of my 90 minute kayak trip
down the lake and back, as the clouds that made the dawn beautiful precluded a
real sunrise. I had hoped to miss the noise and wake of powerboats, which I
largely succeeded in doing (but not completely; some fisherman get up early and
really need to go FAST across the lake to get to their quiet fishing spot). I
hugged the shore, hoping for early-morning wildlife sightings, but was largely
frustrated. Down a narrow cove I saw movement, and watched a deer feed; later
in the shallow water of the inflow stream, I surprised a great blue heron, but
the viewings were sparse.

While there were not many powerboats, there was a continuous
booming in the background. I try to convince myself that, despite the early hour,
it is fireworks from the folks who figure any holiday is good for fireworks.
But …today is September 1, the first day of the 9-month hunting season around the
lake that began last year. My neighbor, who was here Friday night, says there
were fireworks at midnight and guns at dawn, a day early. They do not sound
like shotguns, too many single shots in a row – and “only” shotguns and bows
are allowed right around the lake, not rifles. So maybe it is fireworks, or
maybe it is rifles farther away…the walk-in hunting in the woods is supposed to
begin across the road from the lake road. I take heart in that, and the fact
that, as I paddle down the lake, the noise seems to get neither closer nor
farther, so maybe it is far. Maybe I will not be an accidental target in my
yellow kayak. Pretty confident. Pretty confident, but not, I fear, totally. And
it cannot be good for seeing wildlife.

We didn’t come until Saturday because on Friday night we
went to the preview performance of the premiere of Daniel Beaty’s “Tallest Tree
in the Forest”, about Paul Robeson. Written and performed as a one person show
by Beaty (and directed by Moisés Kaufman), it was excellent, and should be seen.
One of the Robeson songs that Beaty performs is the “Ballad for Americans” by
Earl Robinson and John LaTouche. One of the most popular songs of its time (per
Wikipedia, “In the 1940 presidential campaign it was
sung at both the Republican National Convention and that of the Communist Party”).
It is worth reading the lyrics of and listening to http://www.lyricsty.com/paul-robeson-ballad-for-americans-lyrics.html,
among them:

u said it. (Mail carrier?) Yes ma'am.
(Hospital worker?) Absotively! (Social worker?) Posolutely!
Truck driver? Definitely!
Miner, seamstress, ditchdigger, all of them.
I am the "etceteras" and the "and so forths" that do the
work.

Tomorrow is Labor
Day, and we celebrate the “’etceteras’ and ‘and so forths’ that do the work.”
In this era of billionaire financiers and too-big-to-fail banks, Labor Day is
the day for the rest of us.